“The value we bring is heightened reliability and advanced security. That’s why we partnered with Scaleway” - interview with Stancer’s George Owen
Stancer is a payment services provider and a key fintech within the iliad Group. With financial companies increasingly sensitive to where and how data is stored, we sat down with its CEO, George Owen, to better understand the financial sector’s specific cloud needs.
Scaleway Blog: Could you please introduce yourself and Stancer?
George Owen: Stancer is a payment services provider, based in France and across Europe, offering two main service types:
- Processing: the exchange of information flow when a payment goes through
- Acquiring: when you take the money, put it in escrow then disperse it back to the merchant.
We’ve been active for three years, starting off by processing iliad Group payments. Our expertise lies in processing recurring high-frequency payments. We built a system that’s particularly adapted for recurring business models like that of telcos, but also across payment methods. So, for example, if a Free Mobile client’s payment doesn’t work out via direct debit, we can generate a credit card payment link to ensure it succeeds.
After that, we developed an omnichannel product called StancerPay. It takes the best of on- and off-line pure players’ services and bundles them into one. It has no subscription, competitive pricing and is simple to integrate. So if you have an eshop, you just download a model and you’re ready to go.
Like Scaleway, you’re a small challenger in a large market, competing with the likes of Stripe, Adyen or traditional banks. Do the similarities stop there?
Our market is way more fragmented than the cloud. Even Banque Populaire, the leading player in France, only manages 20% of all transactions. It doesn’t make things easier for us, but every fragmented market will tend to consolidate. Those who succeed are those whose products you can easily plug into, and that’s the case with us. Furthermore, we don’t need consolidation, as we’re growing organically.
So what is the biggest challenge Stancer has to overcome?
Payments are a commodity. You take them for granted. Until they break down, then they become the highest priority. When you can’t capture the cash… it’s the highest priority. So the value we bring is heightened reliability and advanced security. We’re dealing with banking data, some of the most regulated in the world. So we work to provide a highly reliable, robust product, with best-in-class security, to make sure none of our data is breached by bad actors. That’s why we partnered with Scaleway, as you’re the best to help us with those two elements.
Thanks! So, based on your experiences, could you tell us how important the following criteria are for fintech actors like you, when it comes to the cloud?
- Security
It’s essential. We have to comply with countless certifications and regulations: GDPR and (credit card norm) PCI DSS being the most important. Every single fintech product is bound to have reliability and security problems. At Stancer, four people out of a 60-strong team are dedicated to regulation and compliance, and who report to the banking authority on a monthly basis. I have to do two interviews per year with (national regulator) Banque de France, to make sure we’re doing nothing wrong with people’s funds or data.
We also comply with norms like DSP2, which allows us to access bank accounts and run credit checks on them. This allows us to provide merchants with services such as knowing if a customer can afford to pay monthly installments on a given product.
- Sovereignty
Scaleway and Stancer’s being based in Europe - especially in France - has more and more echo with merchants. We don’t want banking data to be stored by US CSPs (cloud service providers), as a lot of merchants are becoming more sensitive to data protection. Scaleway is top in class when it comes to GDPR compliance.
Sovereignty is massively more important than two or three years ago. “Where is the data stored?” is now one of the first questions people ask. It’s becoming more and more important in any business, but especially with money. Because you can’t sell your banking data. The only person with access to your banking data is your bank. If I had access to it, I’d know your credit store and your consumption patterns.
- Reliability
Scaleway is top in class when it comes to redundancy [when data is stored across more than one data center; in case one fails, the other(s) take over]. You’re on a par with the biggest CSPs on that front. We operate from two data centers, so our services and data are shared across them. If and when that switch between data centers happens, we as a cloud customer need to not even see that switch happen. Redundancy is essentially the speed at which you can respond, and it has to be as low as possible. Some of our clients are restaurant owners, who capture all payments in a 30-minute window. We have to make sure systems are up at that time, and that response times are very low.
- Agility and Accessibility
We’re not a cyclical business, but we do have to handle service access peaks, that is core. Plus we’re based in France but we’re scaling across Europe, so Scaleway is properly placed to help us do that. It’s also key that our cloud services be as accessible as possible, especially for infra teams with limited resources, they need to be able to easily manage anything related to our cloud provider.
Finally, the financial sector seems particularly interested in Green IT. Why is that?
IT is the banking sector’s number one source of direct emissions, so it makes sense for them to be more sustainable. Furthermore, as I’ve said, it’s a highly regulated sector, so we’re very accustomed to ensuring we’re in line with regulations. And I’m sure there’ll be more rules we’ll have to conform with in the future, in order to reduce emissions.